Atelier d'Urbanité

The Sea Palace project site benefits from a truly exceptional location. Set in the Al Bateen waterfront area, easily accessible from the Abu Dhabi city centre, the 21-hectares site sits “between two waters:” the Arabian Gulf to the southwest and an artificial channel or “Khor” to the northeast. It is also a very green parcel, filled with remarkable trees and plants, and still featuring the old exotic garden of His Highness’s residence. In Abu Dhabi‘s periodic extreme weather conditions, the site as it is today already appears to be an oasis, a breath of fresh air, and a green lung for the city. The site is – in many ways – a “forest on an island,” an obviously unique location that deserves a unique and ambitious project. 

The Al Bateen public beach represents an important asset for the project as it already offers a focal point for a peaceful interaction between the private residential program and the public use of the urban landscape. Our project seeks to recreate the same type of “meeting point” on the north side of the site, by incorporating most of the project’s services there, and by occupying the currently unused beach to the northeast. While it is easily accessible and well integrated into Abu Dhabi’s urban network, this plot of land cannot be treated like another classical residential project: it hosted His Highness’s residence, and as it opens up to the public, it must continue to be a place of exclusiveness and luxury, a unique living experience for a privileged segment of the population.

PROGRAM
Our design process began with the project’s programmatic description: a plot of 21 hectares, a mixed-use program (villas, services, a boutique mall, a public promenade…), and the need to connect the project to the beach, and the adjacent streets. Our proposed masterplan thus accommodates all these elements: it features a sufficient number of villas to achieve profitability; it organizes services and retail spaces in a way that is both accessible to the site’s residents yet opened to the public, and it creates a new, highly pleasant public space – a promenade connecting the beach to the southwest and the channel to the northeast.

INSPIRATIONS AND PRINCIPLES
The site’s evident qualities were the first and foremost inspirations for our project. The project’s masterplan is articulated around water and trees, or to be precise canals and
gardens. These elements are not just aesthetical choices, but they also offer a series of pragmatic and technical advantages: the lush vegetation offers privacy and intimacy for the villas, and shaded areas to the private gardens; the canals are in fact an ecological
water cleaning treatment for the villas’ swimming pools while they create further space and privacy between the lots.

ABU Dhabi sea palace

équipe A'U
Jean Michel Culas
Zinedine Bekkar
Max Castro

crédits photos
Perspectiviste
Alexandre Martin